Ever since Russia started its war in Ukraine, assessments of its military power have vacillated wildly. First, Russian forces were supposed to overrun Ukraine and crush any resistance in a matter of days. Then, they were thought to be so weak that a Ukrainian counteroffensive or a new capability might cause them to collapse altogether. Now, with the war in its fourth year, and Donald Trump’s return to office bringing uncertainty about Western support, it has started to seem once again that time might be on Moscow’s side.
Dara Massicot argues in Foreign Affairs that none of these images reflects reality. Since the invasion began, Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has been analyzing the state of Russia’s military—its failure and its surprising resiliency. But what has struck Massicot more recently, and what she thinks many observers are missing, is the extent to which Russia has managed to learn and adapt—in Ukraine and beyond. She warns in a new piece for Foreign Affairs that “the Russian military will emerge from its invasion with extensive experience and a distinct vision of the future of combat”—experience it is already sharing with China, Iran, and North Korea.
The United States and Europe should pay close attention. Because if they do not take it upon themselves to “study Russia’s studying,” as Massicot puts it, she worries that they risk not just losing Ukraine but also falling behind in the next global crisis.
You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.
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Xi Jinping's Successor and the Future of China
When Xi Jinping took over the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, he began a new chapter in China’s history—one that would come to be defined above all by his grip on power. Xi overhauled not only the CCP but also China’s economy, military, and role in the world. Yet no matter how secure his power may be—and no matter his recent hot-mic musings about living to 150—what comes after Xi, and how it comes, is an increasingly central question in Chinese politics.
As the political scientists Tyler Jost and Daniel Mattingly wrote recently in Foreign Affairs, “For any authoritarian regime, political succession is a moment of peril . . . and for all its strengths, the CCP is no exception.” And that’s not just a risk for the future. The uncertainty and the jockeying that the succession question spurs is already starting to shape China’s present.
To Jost and Mattingly, there’s more at stake than just the matter of who will follow Xi. They note: “The drama created by a struggle over the succession . . . is unlikely to stay inside China’s borders.” They joined Deputy Editor Chloe Fox to discuss the nature of Xi’s rule, his attempt to define his legacy, and what that will mean for China in the coming months, years, and decades.
You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.
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Poland’s View From the Frontline of Europe
In early September, around 20 Russian drones entered Poland’s airspace. NATO and Polish forces scrambled fighter jets to shoot them down, but not before several had traveled hundreds of miles into Polish territory.
To Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, the incursion was not just a test of NATO’s resolve. It was a reminder of the precarious position of the alliance’s frontline states as the war in Ukraine grinds on for its third year, and as Donald Trump upends the basic bargain of the transatlantic alliance.
Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Sikorski on the morning of September 24 in New York, where he was attending the UN General Assembly. They discussed the ongoing threat from Russia and what it will take, in Washington and in European capitals, to prevent it from escalating. But more than that, Sikorski is grappling with a moment of sharp change in geopolitics—trying to understand both why the old order collapsed and how to navigate the new order just now taking shape.
You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.
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Is America Ready for the Age of Cyber Warfare?
In 2024, the U.S. government discovered that Chinese hackers had penetrated a huge swath of the American telecommunications system—and remained there for years. That attack came to be known as Salt Typhoon. China has not only managed to steal the data and surveil the communications of hundreds of millions of Americans. It also embedded itself in the United States’ most important infrastructure, giving Beijing a crucial advantage in a conflict.
Anne Neuberger was until recently the top cybersecurity official on the National Security Council. She was in that position when Salt Typhoon was discovered. And to her, the attack is not just an isolated incident of cyberespionage. Rather, it is evidence of American weakness, and Chinese dominance, in a central arena of national security.
“Decades after the widespread adoption of the Internet opened a new realm of geopolitical contestation,” she writes in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, “the United States has fallen behind, failing to secure a vast digital home front.” Neuberger warns that, as artificial intelligence grows ever more sophisticated, the threat of a cyberattack that could paralyze the country in a time of crisis has never been higher.
You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.
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The World That Tariffs Will Make
Donald Trump has been railing against the global economic order from the start of his political career. But in his second term as president, he has turned that critique into blistering action. In just five months, the trade war that started with his April tariffs has completely reshaped the global economy—and struck at the very heart of the trade system that emerged after the end of the Cold War.
To Michael Froman, the diagnosis is terminal. Froman, now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, which publishes Foreign Affairs, served as the U.S. trade representative in the Obama administration. “Even if pieces of the old order manage to survive,” he writes in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, “the damage is done: there is no going back.” Trump’s “America first” trade policy, and China’s analogous strategy, herald a new order of protectionism, unilateralism, and mercantilism.
Froman warns that economic anarchy could ensue. But as he sees it, any hope of resurrecting the corpse of the old order is delusional. “Nostalgia,” he argues, “is not a strategy.” Rather, the task at hand is to build a new “global economy shaped by rules even without a global rules-based system.”
You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.
Foreign Affairs invites you to join its editor, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, as he talks to influential thinkers and policymakers about the forces shaping the world. Whether the topic is the war in Ukraine, the United States’ competition with China, or the future of globalization, Foreign Affairs’ weekly podcast offers the kind of authoritative commentary and analysis that you can find in the magazine and on the website.
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